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Kebabistan

Keme, aka the "Mesopotamian Truffle," is a vaguely potato-like fungi that grows this time of year in the arid lands of southeastern Turkey and which local chefs have for centuries been using in seasonal dishes, especially kebab.

Turkish scientists have ascribed all kinds of miracle powers to the humble keme, but its strange magic can mostly be witnessed by the effect it has on kebab lovers, who eagerly await its short-lived appearance every spring. A good example is a recent dispatch from the Turkish city of Gaziantep by the EatingAsia blog's Robyn Eckhardt, who was lucky enough to score some skewers of keme at one of the city's most celebrated kebab spots. From her report:

This being spring, Şirvan is featuring seasonal keme mantari (desert "truffles", big knobby fungi that grow beneath the ground) on its kebap menu, making the most of the fungi by mincing them together with lamb and lamb fat (the basis of any good kebab is plenty of fat minced into the meat) and then skewering logs of the mince between chunks of truffle. Few Antep kebapci serve keme, and Şirvan's go fast. We score the last two skewers of the day, and feel lucky. The keme are deeply earthy but not overpowering, and the chewiness of the whole specimens is a fine complement to the tender, melting meat-and-mushroom mince.

Those who are in Istanbul and want to try keme without going to Gaziantep can head over to Ciya, on the city's Asian side, which is serving the seasonal speciality (along with several other hard to find ones) for the next few weeks.

Over the last year, the Hvino.com website has become an increasingly essential source for news and information about developments in the world of Georgian wine. The site, which is run by a Tbilisi-based agency called Artenom Georgia Consulting, has now added a new feature which could make it even more indispensable: an online shopping guide to Georgian wine, complete with ratings from some impressive partners (Wine Spectator, for example).

The guide, which allows users to enter names of specific bottles and get ratings and information about the producer, can be found here.

Like a tsunami that arrives without any warning, the confection known as "trilece" -- a sponge cake soaked in a creamy milk bath -- has taken Istanbul's dessert scene by storm over the last few years. From ritzy uptown patisseries to humble old city kofte joints, the dessert seems to be everywhere.

But where did it come from? That's the difficult question Culinary Backstreets tries to answer in a story posted today. Trilece (pronounced "tree-leche"), as the name implies, is connected to the famous Latin American tres leches cake. But the one that has taken over Istanbul hails from the Balkans, creating something of a mystery about how a cake with South American roots worked its way through the Balkans and into the pastry shops of Istanbul. From Culinary Backstreets' story:

We’ve been following the movement of trileçe all over the city and it is spreading fast. Just in the past couple of years, it has made its debut in sweetshops, from modern Etiler all the way down to the historic Grand Bazaar. There are wholesalers of this cake supplying restaurants all over town. Tuğra Restaurant, at the Çırağan Palace Kempinski hotel on the Bosphorus, includes it on the menu as a signature dish. But even more significantly, trileçe has breached the seemingly impenetrable bulwark against fads, working its way into even Köfteci Arnavut, a third-generation, exceedingly old-school meatball shop where the menu has not changed since 1947.

Today marks the start of Nowruz (or "new day"), the Persian New Year celebration, a 13-day holiday which involves some very deep and specific culinary traditions. NPR's "The Salt" blog takes a look at the most important one, the setting of the traditional haftseen table:

Nowruz begins at the stroke of the vernal equinox, when the sun crosses the equator. Today (March 20), spring will come at 12:57 p.m. EDT. At that precise moment, millions of families of Iranian descent will gather around a ceremonial table known as the haftseen. (Think colorful, elaborate Day Of The Dead-type altars meet a mashup of Easter and Passover traditions.) Young and old hold hands and count down to the New Year together and cheer Eide Shoma Mobarak, or Happy New Year!

The haftseen table is a relatively recent addition to Nowruz – a folksy tradition with murky beginnings. "We do not even find this spread mentioned in the chronicles of travelers to Iran up to the modern times," says Ahmad Sadri, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Lake Forest College and an expert on ancient Persia.

Haftseen "seems to have come into vogue only in the last century, owing to publicity in the media," according to Columbia University's extensive entry in its Encyclopedia Iranica.

And yet, "its essential items perfectly afford reasonable explanation as the reflections of the pastoral and sedentary conditions of ancient Iranians and of their beliefs."

In every home, the haftseen table is decorated with seven items – since seven is considered a lucky number. Each item begins with the letter sin (s) in Persian, and each item is a symbol of spring and renewal, including:

As described in a Turko-File blog post yesterday, the Tuesday death of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan -- an Istanbul boy who spent 269 days in a coma after apparantly being struck in the head by a police tear gas canister -- has helped to reignite the protests that first rocked Istanbul last summer during the Gezi Park demonstrations.

One of the interesting elements of these new events has been the presence of bread loaves carried by demonstrators as symbols of protest, to commemorate the fact that Berkin had left his home on the day he was injured in order to go buy bread. (The Bianet website has a nice gallery of silent "bread" protests held two days ago after Berkin died.)

Writing on her blog, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci explains why bread is proving to be such a powerful symbol of protest in Turkey:

Bread is quasi-sacred in Turkey. In Turkey, it is the source of nourishment and it represents both human labor and God’s bounty through nature. If a piece of bread falls to the ground, my grandmother kisses it after picking it up from where it fell. Wasting bread is seen as a sin, and not having bread at a table will get you howls of protest from people who will tell you they’ll be hungry without bread. (Yes, in Turkey, people will eat bread with pasta, for example).

Berkin was buried today, in a procession that was attended by perhaps tens of thousands and which was soon forcibly broken up by police using gas and water cannons. Held aloft by many of the mourners? Loaves of bread.

With its newfound oil and gas riches, Azerbaijan has been able to buy its way onto the world stage in a number of areas -- art and architecture, for example -- that one wouldn't normally expect from a small country on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Now it appears Azerbaijan is trying to apply this winning formula to wine, another field where the country, despite having a long history of winemaking, has not been particularly associated with (at least not in a good way). Reports the AzerNews website:

Azerbaijan is planning to gain more shares of world's vine market. It comes after the country joins the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV). Agriculture Ministry's Department Head Sabir Veliyev made the remark at a session of the Agrarian Policy Committee of the Azerbaijani Parliament on January 29. Veliev recalled that a prohibition law adopted by the Soviet leadership in 1985 on vine production has destroyed the viticulture industry in Azerbaijan. "Before the adoption of this law, the country produced about two million tons of grapes per year, which provided 40-45 percent of Azerbaijan SSR's GDP," he noted. Veliyev went on to note that in 2013, Azerbaijan harvested 150,000 tons of grapes. However, Azerbaijan intends to return to its past production capacity. The Agrarian Policy Committee has handed the draft law on Azerbaijan's joining to OIV to the parliament for further consideration.

Sahlep, a hot, milky drink made from the powdered root of a type of orchid, may be a sweet wintertime treat in Istanbul, but for the roving vendors who sell the beverage from rolling carts, life is anything but sweet. Faced with growing pressure from municipal authorities, who are working to crack down on unlicensed street vendors, Istanbul's sahlep sellers are struggling to survive, with their carts sometimes confiscated.

Tagging along with one seller named Huseyin Kozak as he cruises the snowy streets of Istanbul's Beyoglu neighborhood, Culinary Backstreets in a new article offers a look into the life of the city's sahlep sellers -- most of whom come from the same village in Turkey's Isparta region -- and the history behind their work. From the article:

By the name of the place, you’d expect the Sütçüler (“Milkmen” in English) district near Isparta in southern Turkey to be a dairyland paradise, thick on the ground with men carrying buckets sloshing fresh milk, cheese wheels stacked in cool dark sheds, verdant hills freckled with cows. But there are no milkmen in Sütçüler, at least not in the wintertime. The area’s name actually has nothing to do with anything going on in Sütçüler itself.

The mayor of Sütçüler, Hüseyin Müftüoğlu confirmed this over the phone. “In 1938, the decision was made to name this area Sütçüler. For more than 100 years, in Istanbul, in every neighborhood there’s a milkman and almost surely, that man is from here, one of our Sütçüler brothers,” Müftüoğlu told us.

From a distance, it might seem like these Ispartans are dairymen, providing an important link between city folk and the farms back in the village, but spending some time among those from Sütçüler, we found their most common feature to be their willingness to grind out a living by dragging a push cart through the streets of Istanbul, winter after winter.

Carlo Catani, an activist with the Slow Food movement, was at a wine show in Italy two years ago tasting some bottles from Georgia when an idea struck him: what if he were able to convince Italian winemakers to make wine using the traditional Georgian method of fermenting it in large clay vessels known as kvevri?

The initial idea was something of a joke, says Catani, who works on promoting wine culture in his native region of Romagna. But the more he thought about it, the more intrigued he was about the idea. “We talked to some producers in our region, and 15 of them agreed to try doing it. Our goal was to help spread Georgian wine culture, but another goal was to get the producers to collaborate among themselves, which was something they usually didn’t do. This was the only way they could make this kind of wine in a good way,” Catani says.

And so was born what is still an ongoing experiment – to make Italian wine with a Georgian accent (or is it Georgian wine with an Italian accent)?

The experiment is not so far fetched, Catani says. Turns out making wine in clay vessels was once done in Italy – in Roman times, that is. “The Romans stopped using this method more or less after the Barbarian invasion. After that they started using wooden barrels,” he explains. “So we more or less have some 1,500 years of a gap in using kvevris. The Georgians have been using kvevris from the beginning, from when wine grapes were domesticated until now. So they have good knowledge in how to use this.”

Along with covering figure skating, luge and skiing, the Sochi winter games are providing some outlets with the opportunity to create some confusion about the provenance of some Caucasian culinary specialties.

Take the case of khachapuri, that most Georgian of dishes (or so you'd think). Not according to the Annapolis, Maryland Capital Gazette, which in it's "Foraging for Flavor: A Taste of Sochi" feature, offers up a picture of khachapuri with a headline that reads "Russian cheese bread."

Meanwhile, on the website of clothing maker American Eagle, a travel blog posting about Sochi offers up a sampling of "Russian Delicacies," among them not only khachapuri, but also khinkali, the classic Georgian dumpling. (The original post appears to have been taken down, perhaps due to a Georgian outcry, but a cached version can be found here.)

Of course, considering the history of the region and historic tensions between Russia and Georgia, the confusion over who can claim khachapuri as their own has touched a raw nerve among Georgians. Says a local Kebabistan source in Tbilisi: "I have seen Georgians posting photos of churchela [a confection made out of grape molasses and walnuts], etc. on Facebook with reminders to journalists that these are Georgian foods. Attributing these foods to Sochi or to Russia is being seen in Georgia as just another example of Russia trying to steal things that belong to Georgia, and managing to deceive clueless foreign journalists."

By now, it's not secret that Turkey -- although blessed with a very long coastline and a cuisine heavy on seafood -- is slowly losing its fish stocks. In fact, as one article pointed out a few years back, the mackerel served in the iconic fish sandwiches along Istanbul's Golden Horn is today most likely hails from Norway, having arrived from there as a frozen filet.

So what's causing the fish in Turkey to disappear? Reuter's takes a look in an article today:

Over fishing, illegal netting and pollution threaten the industry. Anchovy production, which accounts for around two-thirds of the annual catch, fell by 28 percent in 2012, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute.

In a bid to replenish stocks, the government has banned fishing in the summer months when fish reproduce and says it is tightening supervision. But it appears too little, too late.

"Twenty years ago, you put your arm in the water you could pull out fish - there were so many," said Osman Korkmaz, a 53-year-old fisherman who has fished the Bosphorus Strait and Marmara Sea for 40 years.

Aylin Ulman, a researcher with the University of British Columbia's Sea Around Us Project, conducted more than 150 interviews with Turkish fishermen from May through July to determine how Turkey's fisheries have changed.

The number of commercial species in Turkey's fishing areas has fallen to just five or six from more than 30 in the 1960s, she said, based on her survey and catch data Turkey provided to the United Nations from 1967 to 2010.

About Kebabistan

For many of us, the real action in Eurasia is happening in the region’s kitchens. From noodles in Kyrgyzstan to doner in Turkey and everything else edible in between, Kebabistan brings you the latest developments in Eurasia’s food culture.

About The Author

Kebabistan is written by Yigal Schleifer, a freelance journalist based in Washington, DC. Between 2002 and 2010 he was based in Istanbul, where he worked as a correspondent for EurasiaNet, covering Turkey and the surrounding region. Schleifer is the co-creator of IstanbulEats.com, a guide to Istanbul's "culinary backstreets" and also one of the authors of the 2009 Fodor's guide to Turkey.

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